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The Initial British Impact on India: A Case Study of the Benares Region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Bernard S. Cohn
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Extract

The British administrative frontier in India had widely differing effects on the political and social structures of the regions into which it moved from the middle of the eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth century. It is impossible to generalize on the impact of the administration, because the regions into which it moved differed in their political and social structures, and because British administration and ideas about administration, both in India and in Great Britain, changed markedly throughout this hundred year period.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , August 1960 , pp. 418 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1960

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References

1 The research upon which this paper is based was carried out from January 1958 to July 1959 in the Commonwealth Relations Office, India Office Library, and the Uttar Pradesh Central Record Office, Allahabad, while the writer was on a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation.

2 A brief outline of the history of the Benares Province can be found in Dewar, Douglas, A Handbook to the English Pre-Mutiny Records in the Government Record Rooms of the United Provinces of Agra and Ondh, n. d., no place of publication, pp. 258–262.Google Scholar

3 For the duties of the kāzī see M. Ahmad, B., The Administration of Justice in Medieval India, Aligarh, 1941, pp. 120–123 and 173–176.Google Scholar

4 Ibid, pp. 82–84.

5 India Office Library, Bengal Civil Judicial Proceedings, 6 April 1789Google Scholar, No. 6, “Translation of the Petition of Cauzy Tuckey Ally Khan.”

6 India Office Library, Home Miscellaneous Series, Vol. 379, “Report by Mr. Beaufoy,” p. 189Google Scholar; India Office Library, Bengal Secret Consultations, 13 Dec. 1775Google Scholar, Fowke to Hastings, LS 16 Nov. 1775; and Hastings, Warren, A Narrative of the Insurrection which Happened in the Zamendary of Banaris, Calcutta, 1782, Appendix, Part I, p. 21Google Scholar, mispaged as 12.

7 Allahabad Central Record Office, Miscellaneous Revenue Files; Vol. 17, Basta 100, D. B. Morrison, “A Few Remarks on Mr. Jonathan Duncan's Settlement of the Benares Province.”

8 Allahabad Central Record Office, Benares Commissioner's Office, Miscellaneous Files, Basta 98, Vol. 2, “List of Pargana Sarishtadars, 25 July 1796.”

9 India Office Library, Bengal Revenue Consultations, 3 Oct. 1788Google Scholar, No. 24, “Raja Mahipnarain's Muffusil Settlement.“

10 India Office Library, Bengal Revenue Consultations, Duncan to Gov. Gen. Consultation 3 Oct. 1788.Google Scholar

11 Kaye, John William, The Life and Correspondence of Major General Sir John Malcolm, London, 1856, Vol. I, pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

12 Ibid, p. 115.

13 Hastings, , Narrative, p. 22Google Scholar; and Storey, C. A., Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographic Survey, Section II, Fasciculus 3, London, 1939, p. 700.Google Scholar

14 Buckland, C. E., Dictionary of Indian Biography, London, 1906, p. 10.Google Scholar

15 India Office Library, Bengal Civil Judicial Proceedings, Consultation 11 Sept. 1795 Duncan to Gov. Gen.; and Ross, Charles, ed., Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis, Vol. II, London, 1859, p. 34.Google Scholar

16 Khair, Maulana und Muhammad, Din, Tazkirat-ul-Ulama or A Memoir of the Learned Men of Jaunpur, ed. with an English translation by Ullah, Muhammad Sana, Calcutta, 1934, pp. 74–82.Google Scholar

17 Storey, , Persian Literature, pp. 521–22.Google Scholar

18 Allahabad Central Record Office, Benares Commissioner's Office, “Settlement Book from 1197–1206,” Basta 48, Vol. 134B, “Settlement of Taluka Bhaysa Daoorawee.”

19 India Office Library, Bengal Revenue Consultation, 3 Oct. 1788Google Scholar, No. 3, Duncan to Gov. Gen.

20 Hastings, , Narrative, p. 44.Google Scholar

21 I have elsewhere discussed some of the aspects of the political and legal structure of a lineage-controlled tālukā. Cohn, Bernard S., “Some Notes on Law and Change in North India,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. VIII, No. 1, October 1959, pp. 79–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 The description of Badlapur and Saltanat Singh is based on Shri Aditya Narain Singh, Biography of Saltanat Bahadur Singh, Talukadar of Badlapur, a manuscript in Hindi. Aditya Narain Singh was a descendant of Saltanat Singh. A small landholder from Badlapur, he collected legends and stories regarding his ancestor and wrote the biography in 1952–53. One of die principal aims of the work is to prove that Saltanat Singh was the first freedom fighter in the area, and that at the time of compensation for confiscation of zamindari rights under the zamindari abolition act, his descendants should receive the compensation, and not the Raja of Jaunpur, who defeated Saltanat Singh on behalf of the British in 1796 and was rewarded witii Saltanat Singh's lands. The work was translated for me by Shri Nath Singh.

23 In November 1958, the descendant of a Brahman who had at one point supported Saltanat Singh showed me a dhānpaṭṭa and die decision made by P. C. Wheller, the settlement officer of Jaunpur district from 1879 to 1886 in village Tiera, tālukā Badlapur. The Brahman had been rewarded with a māfī grant and the dhānpaṭṭa was the original grant. The setdement officer upheld the validity of the grant. Even though the grant had been resumed in 1842, when there was large-scale resumption of mājī lands, ownership of this land was attested to by the document, which die British ruled was a valid grant made by Saltanat Singh, who in the late eighteenth century had die right to make such a māfī grant.

24 See Hastings, Narrative, and Davies, C. C., Warren Hastings and Oudh, Oxford, 1939.Google Scholar

25 For the development of the administration, see Misra, B. B., The Central Administration of the East India Company, 1773–1834, Manchester, 1959Google Scholar; Aspinall, A., Cornwallis in Bengal, Manchester, 1931Google Scholar; D. Bhanu, History and Administration of the North-Western Provinces, 1803–1858. R. N. Nagar is one of the few who have examined the question of Indians in the civil service at this early period. See his “The Subordinate Services in the Revenue Administration of the North Western Provinces, 1801–1833,” Journal of the United Provinces Historical Society, Vol. XV, Part 2; “The Tahsildar in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces, 1801–1833,” Uttar Pradesh Historical Quarterly, Vol. II (n.s.), Part I, 1954; and “Employment of Indians in the Revenue Administration of the N. W. P., 1801–1833,” Journal of the United Provinces Historical Society, Vol. XIII, December, 1940.

26 India Office Library, Bengal Civil Judicial Proceedings, 20 Nov. 1795Google Scholar, No. 22, Rider to Gov't.

27 Ibid., No. 16. The figures are based on rough calculations, using the Benares District Court as the base from which the figures for the other courts are projected.

28 Allahabad Central Record Office, Miscellaneous Revenue Files, Basta 99, Vol. 12, “Kistbundi of the Land Revenue,” Collectorship of Benares, F. S. 1210 and 1213; India Office Library, Home Miscellaneous Series, Vol. 775, Wynne, R. O., “Report on Jaunpur,” August 15, 1815.Google Scholar

29 Allahabad Central Record Office, Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners of Behar and Benares, Vol. 9, Proceedings 21 Oct. 1816 LR No. 162, Report from Robert Barlow on Deputation to Badlapur; Processings Sudder Board of Revenue N. W. P., 20 Sept. 1833, No. 28, G. M. Bird to Board; Benares Commissioner's Office, Miscellaneous Revenue Files, Basta 101, Vol. 17, Letter of John Deane, Dec. 10, 1803; Oldham, W. O., Tenant Rights and Auction Sales in Ghazcepoor and the Province of Benares, Dublin, 1873.Google Scholar

30 Imperial Record Department, Calendar of Persian Correspondence, Vol. V., Calcutta, 1930, No. 1407, p. 306Google Scholar; Oldham, Wilton, Historical and Statistical Memoir of the Ghazipur District, part I, Allahabad, 1870, pp. 100–105Google Scholar; Hastings, Narrative.

31 The details of Sheo Lai Dube's early life were given to me by his descendant, Yadvedra Datt Dube, the present Raja of Jaunpur. Dube's career under Duncan can be traced in Shakespear, A. ed., Selections from the Duncan Records, Vol. I, Benares, 1873.Google Scholar For his later career, see references in footnote 28.

32 On the Barton case, the report of the commission is in India Office Library, Bengal Civil Judicial Proceedings, 2 July 1807Google Scholar, Nos. 19 and 20.

33 Letter of Fortesque, M. J., Judge, of Allahabad, , in Selections from the Revenue Records, North-West Provinces, Vol. III, Allahabad, 1873, pp. 22–24.Google Scholar

34 Allahabad Central Record Office, Benares Commissioner's Office, Benares District Revenue Files, Vol. 125, File No. 2005.Google Scholar

35 Shakespear, A., Comparative Tables of District Establishment in the North West Provinces 1852, Calcutta, 1853, pp. 190–193.Google Scholar

36 For the Mittur family, see An Account of the Late Govendram Mittur, by a member of the family, Calcutta, 1869. For other evidence of the usefulness of the connection with an English officer, see Cust, R. N., “Report on a School for the Instruction for the Native Amlah,” Selections from the Records of Government, Vol. III, Art. XXVII, Agra, 1855Google Scholar; Allahabad Central Record Office, Ghazipur Collectorate, Copies of Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1820–1827Google Scholar, Barlow to Tilghman, 5 June 1824; and Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners in Behar and Benares, April 1819, Middleton to Bd. Consultation, 3 April 1819.

37 Allahabad Central Record Office, Benares Commissioner's Office, Benares Revenue Files, Vol. 61, File No. 369. For other evidence of corruption and of the large-scale corruption possible, see Khan, Panch Kauri, Revelations of an Orderly, Benares, 1848Google Scholar; for a slightly later period, see Prichard, Iltudus, Chronicles of Budgepore, London, 1893Google Scholar, new edition.

38 The figures are based on notices of the sale of land and on compilations of sales of land found scattered throughout the district records of Jaunpur and Benares in the Allahabad Central Record Office. These series are incomplete as to year; files for many years have been lost or destroyed, and within any given year it is impossible to know if all the files were kept.

39 W. Irvine, Report on the Revision of Records in the Ghazipur District, 1880–1885; and P. C Wheeler, Report on the Revision of Records in the District of faunpur from 1877–1886.